In a pandemic who wants to go to work?

What are you going to do if public transport is halted, how many businesses can stand the loss of their work force for one week? Customers will go elsewhere, the business relationship they have been clinging onto now has the perfect excuse to move on. The companies with disaster plans will be the ones that really show their professional quality in times of crisis and these will be the ones who will benefit. Many companies have a limited plan for this in place, such as web access to email or remote access into the company’s servers for a number of staff. Strategies like flexible working practises, company-wide home working schedules and resilient IT services all form part of a well organised and executable disaster recovery plan. Disasters of IT are about more than losses of data or hardware failures. If a company’s staff cannot work is that not the ultimate disaster? Business continuity should be available to all companies whatever is thrown at them.

Commenting on the potential business repercussions of a Pandemic, Charles Black, Chief Executive of Hosted Desktop provider Nasstar said,

“No one is going to give a three month warning that there is going to a be a threat of a dangerous pandemic, or major health risk associated with travelling to work on overcrowded public transport. The time to prepare is not 24hrs before the risk is official, but now.”

Without the availability for the whole workforce to work remotely is any company really prepared for an unforeseen event such as a major disruption to public transport because of a public health emergency or the imposition of travel restrictions because of perceived threats to national security. Only companies where staff have access to their desktop with all of its files and software can truly say they are ready and able to offer full business continuity, even under the most extreme circumstances. Enabling your  staff  with the ability to work from home will guarantee that your customers continue to receive the same high levels of service they expect. With limited  time available to implement a strategy, alternatives  such as on-demand Hosted Desktop may be the only solution.